Theophilos of Edessa (d. 785) [Maron.]

Multifaceted author, historiographer, and translator. Theophilos, who is said
to have been a Maronite, served as astrologer to the Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdī
(r. 775–785) and wrote in Arabic several works on astrology, among which an
influential book on military forecasts, which by the mid-9th cent. had been
partly translated into Greek.

Theophilos’s translations from Greek into Syriac include works by Aristotle, possibly Galen, and most
importantly Homer. Even though Bar ʿEbroyo attributes
to Theophilos the translation of ‘two books’ by Homer, which seems to
suggest that both the Iliad and the Odyssey were involved, there is no
evidence that the Odyssey ever existed in Syriac. The Iliad, by contrast,
was known to several authors, such as Anṭun of Tagrit and the author of the Chronicle of
1234 (who incorporated a long extract into his work), and it is
plausible that Theophilos’s translation was their source. That the Greek
text of the Iliad was available to Syr. scholars is proven by the
underwriting of ms. Brit. Libr. Add. 17,210 (60 folios containing the Greek
Iliad in a 5th-cent. hand), which was re-used in the early 9th cent. for
copying works by Severus of Antioch (see Wright, Catalogue … British
Museum, vol. 2, 548a–550b).

In addition, Theophilos is the author of a historical work, which was used by
Dionysios of Tel Maḥre and through Dionysios was known to Michael Rabo and to the author of the Chronicle of 1234.
Dionysios calls Theophilos a Chalcedonian and accuses him of being biased
against the Syr. Orth., which did not prevent him, however, from using
Theophilos to a considerable extent. Even though Theophilos’s historical
work does not survive, it is not only Dionysios who transmits some of his
materials. Scholars nowadays assume that Theophilos’s work served as the
common source on which, in addition to Dionysios, two other historians drew:
the Byzantine historian Theophanes (who must have known an abridged Greek
translation) and the Melkite Agapius of Manbij, who wrote in Arabic. In all
likelihood, Theophilos’s work was a narrative history that focused on the
early Islamic period, until the middle of the 8th cent. (see Hoyland,
631–71).

While some scholars in the past wanted to see the remnants of Theophilos’s
work in the imperfectly preserved Maronite Chronicle (which covers the
period from Alexander to the 660s: ed. E. W. Brooks and J. B. Chabot, in
CSCO 3–4 [1904], 43–74 [Syr.], 37–57 [LT]), this has now become very
unlikely, in view of the lack of overlap between the Maronite Chronicle and
the ‘common source’ referred to above.